After Dark 》Minsung

1 》No, Fuck You

He leaned back in the desk chair.

The overly fuzzy socks he wore kicking up on the ledge as he forced the squeaky coils of the padded seat backward. Dipping him farther down, nearly bouncing as the chair squealed miserably with each of the bouncing presses he forced it into. Those gentle tussles, bouncing him as if their peaks were ocean waves on a distraught storm sea, rocking his body along with the rhythm of the bright music dimly humming over the headphones slung around his neck. Phone pressed against his ear, where those encasing speakers should have been slamming numbing rhythms to sync up with his heart. The shuffling of another person on the other side ringing loud in the silence of his dark room. Their silence filled in by the springing of his old desk chair.

The screen of the running laptop, various stickers plastered to every bit of platinum coating that dared to show, burned into the retinas of his tired eyes. Wires connecting it to the two desktop screens; One horizontal, the other portrait, both presenting him with lines of gray code he yet to touch. The webcam and microphones on his laptop covered by thick layers of electrical tape, the set of desktops in a similar state as their built-in systems were muted beneath the sticky covering. The computer tower underneath the hardened polish clean of his desk humming a worn note beneath the drone of his room.

Those screens the single flickers of paradise in the silent room.

The bright lighthouses, cutting through the midnight hour he wasted his time waiting for, guiding him as he tried to moor back in the docks of his consciousness.

On the other side of the phone call, an irritated voice scoffed softly, "More?"

"What do you expect?" He responded easily, flipping the call onto speaker as he set the device down on his clean desk. Legs crossing over one another, the fluffy threads of his socks careful not to track unwanted mud into his routinely maintenance keyboard. His hands crossed over his chest as well, coming to fiddle with the volume buttons on his headphones, significantly increasing the thumping beats playing over their speakers to fill the space of the lonely bedroom. Incrementally, the rhythms of the playing song began to sink into his mind, occupying him and helping him focus on the conversation. Music tended to help him concentrate, compared to the overwhelming idea that the general songs were a way he used to avoid socialization.

The voice came again over the phone's speakers, significantly more offended as they complained,

"A discount, Minho???"

"No, fuck you, piece of shit, I let you have agency last time and look where that landed us. You didn't pay me," Minho argued back to him, his hands fiddling with the strings his white hoodie he neglected to wash for more than a few nights. It was fine. It wasn't as if a smell was lingering on it, and it wasn't as if he wore that hoodie anywhere but his bedroom. He wiggled his socked toes over, prodding at the pitch black cat tucked neatly atop his desk. A perfect princess. Currently annoyed with him as he poked at the bread loaf of an animal, "Special deal specifically for you: Double the price."

"Ass."

"A decent night's sleep."

"What?"

"What? Huh?" Minho lurched, blinking up at the empty ceiling of his dark room. He prodded again at the cat as it unfurled from it's folded position to scowl at him. Minho kept gently tapping the animal to the rhythm of his music drifting from the headphones as he fussed, "Sorry, I thought we were naming things we don't get."

The voice on the phone shouted at him, "Dick?!"

"A will to live," He listed again, a buoyant laughter leaving his chest as he mocked the other man, "Wow! We're really good at this!"